Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Making It in Music City

Margo Price’s Maybe We’ll Make It is an artist’s unflinching self-portrait

Margo Price’s Maybe We’ll Make It recalls her gritty struggle for a music career. Price will appear in Nashville at Grimey’s New and Preloved Music on October 4, the 2022 Southern Festival of Books on October 14-16, and Parnassus Books on November 16.

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Your Brain on Music

Richard Manning explores the mysterious allure of song

In If It Sounds Good, It Is Good, Richard Manning makes a case for learning music by ear and explains why it’s a shame music-making is left more and more to professionals. Manning will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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Stuck to the Bones

Margaret A. Burnham examines racist violence in the Jim Crow South

In By Hands Now Known, Margaret Burnham tells an intimate, large-scale, and tragic story of racial violence in the American South from 1920 to 1960. Burnham will be at Novel in Memphis on October 13 and at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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Bringing People into the Room

Francesca T. Royster’s Black Country Music challenges boundaries

Francesca T. Royster’s Black Country Music weaves history, criticism, and memoir into an elegant narrative that challenges assumptions about what country music can be. Royster will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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Sunset of the American Century

Victoria Shorr’s Mid-Air is an intimate portrait of 20th-century America

Victoria Shorr’s Mid-Air, a collection of two novellas, portrays the fall of a patrician New York family and the rise of an immigrant family to wealth and influence; both celebrate mid-20th-century America, an era fading from living memory. Shorr will discuss Mid-Air at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.  

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Still Alive

Death haunts the essays in Rachel Kushner’s The Hard Crowd

Rachel Kushner’s The Hard Crowd gathers two decades of the critically acclaimed novelist’s personal narratives and critical writing. Kushner will appear at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 14-16.

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